An high-speed ferry strikes NYC dock; dozens injured

An high-speed ferry strikes NYC dock; dozens injured

January 10th, 2013 in News

An injured passenger from the Seastreak Wall Street ferry is taken to an ambulance in New York, Wednesday. The ferry from Atlantic Highlands, N.J., banged into the mooring as it arrived at South Street in lower Manhattan during morning rush hour, injuring as many as 70 people, at least one critically, officials said.

NEW YORK (AP) - A high-speed ferry loaded with hundreds of commuters from New Jersey crashed into a dock in lower Manhattan on Wednesday during the morning rush hour, seriously injuring 11 people, including one who suffered a severe head wound falling down a stairwell.

Scores of people who had been standing, waiting to disembark, were hurled to the deck or launched into walls by the impact, which came after the catamaran Seastreak Wall Street slowed following a routine trip across New York Bay and past the Statue of Liberty, passengers said.

"We were pulling into the dock. The boat hit the dock. We just tumbled on top of each other. I got thrown into everybody else. ... People were hysterical, crying," said Ellen Foran, of Neptune City, N.J.

The crash, which ripped open a small part of the hull like an aluminum can, happened at 8:45 a.m. at a pier near the South Street Seaport, at Manhattan's southern tip. Around 70 people suffered minor injuries, and for nearly two hours paramedics treated bruised and dazed passengers on the pier. Firefighters carried several patients on flat-board stretchers as a precaution. Other patients left in wheelchairs.

The cause of the crash was under investigation. The ferry, built in 2003, had recently undergone a major overhaul that gave it new engines and a new propulsion system, but officials said it was too soon to tell whether they played any role in what happened.

Dee Wertz, who was on shore waiting for the ferry, saw the impact. She said that just moments before the ferry hit, she had been having a conversation with a ferry employee about how the boat's captains had been complaining lately about its maneuverability.

"He was telling me that none of these guys like this boat," she said. "It was coming in a little wobbly. It hit the right side of the boat on the dock hard, like a bomb."

"We are simply shocked and stunned that this happened," a company official, adding the company would work with investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board to determine what went wrong. "Our priority continues to be the people who are injured."

About 330 passengers and crew members were aboard the ferry, which had arrived from Atlantic Highlands, a part of the Jersey Shore still struggling to recover from Superstorm Sandy. Passenger Frank McLaughlin, whose home was filled with 5 feet of water in the late October storm, said he was thrown forward and wrenched his knee.

Some passengers were bloodied when they banged into walls and toppled to the floor, he said.

New York City's transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, said the ferry was coming in at 10 to 12 knots, or about 12 to 14 mph, when it struck one slip and then hit a second.

Police said the boat's crew passed alcohol breath tests given after the crash. Crew members also took drug tests, the results of which weren't immediately available.

Officials identified the captain as Jason Reimer, an experienced seaman. In a 2004 profile in Newsday, Reimer said he had joined Seastreak as a deckhand in 1997 and became a captain three years later at age 23.